You know a house is spooky when there are cannibals running around in the basement and walls, in addition to the strange owners! That, my friends, is The People Under the Stairs – a bizarre story with a heavily allegorical plot. When you think of Wes Craven, you think of a horror classic with just the right amount of satire and humour!
To say that this film lives up to your expectations for Wes Craven’s signature flair is an understatement. It’s a classic American horror story that delves into societal conscience. It may appear to be just another gothic melodrama, but it actually reveals the horrors of domestic violence.
This film is more like a grown-up version of Home Alone, and some parts from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York have been stolen directly from this film. In fact, we believe Kevin would be completely dumb if he were in a scenario as awful as the protagonist of this film, Fool! Okay, that’s about it for the build-up! We’ll go over every detail of The People Under the Stairs in this video, from the plot to the explanation.
Exploring the Plot
Poindexter Williams, sometimes known as Fool, lives in a ghetto in Los Angeles with his family. They have, however, fallen behind on their rent, and the landlords are preparing to evict the family. To make matters worse, Fool’s mother is sick with cancer and needs treatment right away.
When Leroy learns that the Robesons own a vast and mysterious mansion with a lot of golden riches stored in it, there appears to be no way to get some quick cash. With his friends Spencer and Fool, Leroy intends to break into the mansion and grab the gold.
As they drive by the house, it seems impenetrable, and there is no way to tell whether there is a security system in place. Initially, they send in Fool to scope it out, posing as a boy scout selling cookies, but the door is not answered.
Eventually, a woman opens the door and refuses to buy anything from Fool or to let him in. There is something off-putting about the place, from the windows that are bolted shut to the strange behavior of the woman.
Seeing that Fool is unable to make his way into the house to check the security system, Spencer dresses up as a municipal worker and demands entry. He steps inside while Leroy and Fool wait in the van. They start worrying when the wait gets a bit too long, and there is no signal from Spencer.
They even watch the Robesons leave the house, clearly leaving Spencer unattended! Leroy begins to suspect that Spencer has double-crossed them and starts thinking that he is stealing all the gold for himself. He decides to wait for no further and breaks into the house with Fool.
Soon after they enter the house, they are accosted by Prince, a mad Rottweiler that is extremely aggressive! They manage to get away from the thing and venture deeper into the house. They both begin looking for Spencer, but the home is far too large, so they decide to split up to cover more land – a horror movie staple!
When Fool enters the subterranean area, he is perplexed by some unusual noises coming from within. To his horror, he comes to Spencer’s body, who appears to have been viciously murdered. He also realizes that he is not alone in the basement, and there are some strange human-like creatures inside a locked pen.
The structure of the place resembles a dungeon, and it seems that these strange, pale children are all imprisoned there. Fool barely manages to make it out of the basement alive, and meets up with Leroy. They are horrified to find that the Robesons have returned and are examining their van that is parked outside.
They desperately try to figure out a way to escape, but every door and window in the house seems unbreakable. In fact, when Fool tries turning one of the door-knobs, he is electrocuted, suggesting that there is no easy exit from the house. As the couple steps inside the house, Leroy and Fool try to hide, but the dog is unleashed upon them.
It pounces on Leroy, but Fool deftly draws it to the electrified door, where an electric jolt stalls it. The cat and mouse game, however, is short-lived, as we witness Mr. Robeson loading his pistols, ready to dispatch the intruder.
He soon spots Leroy and shoots him to death. Fool is now alone in the spooky mansion, which also houses two violent psychos, their insane dog, and some inexplicable creatures in the basement! When the Robesons look through the van and discover Fool’s boy scout outfit, they realise he’s also inside the estate.
Fool runs to hide in another section of the building, and this is where he stumbles upon Alice , the daughter of the owners. She seems rather timid and shy, but she provides Fool with some valuable information about her parents. She says that they have a strange rule around the house where the children cannot see, hear, or speak any evil.
The people under the stairs in the basement are actually children who had broken this rule in the past. These kids have nearly lost their minds and have resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. Alice has been fortunate enough to avoid this fate, and she maintains her peace with the owners by meticulously following every command.
When Mrs. Robeson confronts her for missing a fork while dining, it demonstrates the degree of strictness. Fortunately, a hand from the wall reaches out and hands her the fork just in time. We learn that she has been feeding a boy who lives within the confines of the house and avoids the couple.
His name is Roach, and when he shouted for aid, his tongue was cut out as a punishment. Equally haunting is the scene where Alice is made to wash up the pool of blood from Leroy’s body. She falls and gets some of it on her dress, and Mrs. Robeson absolutely loses it. She makes her scrub herself clean in a bathtub that is filled with very hot water.
Just as Fool is caught with nowhere to run and Mr. Robeson is about to shoot him, the hand reappears and pulls him into the wall. Roach saves Fool and navigates through the walls, avoiding the flurry of bullets that comes their way. Even when Fool is thrown to the cannibalistic children in the basement, Roach comes to his rescue. However, this time he is caught in the shootout and is fatally injured.
Before dying, he writes to Fool and offers him a tiny bag of gold coins, asking him to save Alice from the house. Once again, Fool encounters Alice, and the two attempts to flee through the passageways between the walls. Mr. Robeson does not appear to be the brightest cookie in the room, and his wife is the brains behind the business.
They kept dashing through the walls, causing Mr. Robeson to be perplexed. Mr. Robeson then throws the enraged Rottweiler against the walls. It pursues the two, but Fool’s fast thinking saves the day once more. He lets Prince come up to him just before he gets trapped. As they struggle, Mr. Robeson thinks that he has Fool in his grasp. He stabs through the walls and ends up getting Prince instead, killing the crazy dog.
Fool then guides Alice to reach the attic of the house. Here they find the only open window in the house, but it is way too high! Fool realizes that a jump from the window will land in the pond outside, thus negating the chances of any serious injury.
But Alice is too scared to take the leap. She is hesitant about the world outside as well, having been locked up all her life. The moments wasted due to their hesitation cost them dearly, as Mr. Robeson is able to catch up. Fool jumps out just in time, as Robeson shoots at him.
The jump is executed just as Fool planned, and he ends up in the water. In no time, he crosses the boundary walls and escapes before the Robesons can come chasing. His labour isn’t over, though, because he told Alice that he’d come back for her as soon as he could. When Fool returns home, he shows his grandfather his gold coin haul. It turns out that they have enough gold to last them for years, and that it will cover his mother’s therapy as well as the rent. He also discovers a strange fact about the Robeson family.
Mr. and Mrs. Robeson are brother and sister, not husband and wife, as most people believe. The grandfather of Fool relates how they have always been a family of strange inbred individuals, and how the children have always avoided their home.
They started off as a family that ran a funeral home and made a fortune by selling cheap coffins at expensive prices. Soon, they ventured into the real estate business, and now, they own almost the entire block. Their greed for money has made them absolutely heartless and unhinged. But Fool is determined to fix all the wrongs. He is not just going to sit at home happy with his gold!
He reports the family to Child Welfare, and a police team is sent to investigate the house. However, there is a secret feature in the house that allows things to be concealed completely from the naked eye. The police are unable to catch anything suspicious and leave after some basic questions.
All the horrors of the house are well-hidden while the cops are present. But, unbeknownst to everyone, Fool has taken advantage of this opportunity to break into the house. He locates Alice and informs her that the Robesons are not her biological parents and that they simply kidnapped her along with the other children.
Mrs. Robeson is furious when she learns that Alice has been corrupted by Fool once more. Mr. Robeson dons his eerie suit and maniacally searches the house for the two. The ghetto residents are alerted by the gunfire, and they compel Mrs. Robeson to open the doors.
She watches a large crowd that has gathered around the house and helplessly locks the doors behind them. Just as an infuriated Mrs. Robeson tries to kill Alice, the starving cannibalistic children seize her.
She tries to flee and ends up being stabbed by Alice. The oppressed and tortured children throw her into the basement, and Mr. Robeson watches her land, dead, at his feet. He is now fuming with anger and wants to put an end to Fool and the rebellious children once and for all. He goes on a shooting rampage, but Fool is calmly going about his own business. He breaks into a part of the house storing piles of money.
This turns out to be the source of all the sibling’s evil wealth, and Fool also finds sticks of dynamite lying around. He sets off the explosives, destroying the entire house and killing Mr. Robeson.
The explosion causes all the piled up money to come raining down, and people outside busy themselves enjoying the loot. In the meantime, we see Alice and Fool reuniting at the basement, and they walk out into the night without being noticed by the others. All’s well that ends well, or so it seems!
Our Take on this classic
The People Under the Stairs is unmistakably different from anything else in Wes Craven’s extensive horror career. It may appear to be a comedic fairy tale, but it is certainly one of the director’s most political pictures. His preoccupation with the wealthy and the poor continues, and the story uncovers the unpleasant truths of inequity, discrimination, and societal separation that are still relevant today!
There’s probably the fact that it’s a little bit of everything, from political satire to a fun horror thriller, that makes it so enjoyable. For many, this movie provides a great insight into the race relations and wealth inequality that became disturbingly prominent after the Reagan administration.
In fact, some people believe that Mr. and Mrs. Robeson were actually supposed to resemble Ronald Reagan and the first lady, Nancy Reagan . Even they used to call each other Mommy and Daddy, just like the psychotic couple in this film.
The movie does well to build the suspense on the lines of urban folklore. The way grandpa Booker tells Fool about the Robeson family is a perfect example of that narrative. You see him hyping up the mystery surrounding the family with all sorts of rumors that went around. The police never paid much attention to these rumors, but the community knew better than to get to close to this godforsaken place.
The film employs urban mythology to create a contemporary fairytale that is exciting to see merely because of its relevancy. The adversaries are no better than fairytale creatures, and their acts are almost certainly worse! When Fool is trapped inside the house, the fairy-tale structure becomes even clearer because every moment after that is spent trying to escape the monsters.
In a later interview, the director stated that the house was inspired by a terrible nightmare he once had about a house that appeared simple on the front but contained an unending network of secret chambers on the interior. We give thanks to the heavens for these geniuses’ unsettling dreams.
Craven was also inspired by a real-life incident where two robbers broke into a house to find children locked up in shocking conditions.It was a haunting realization for the director that a seemingly perfect household could hold such dark and disturbing secrets.
This house, with its relentless puzzles, booby-traps, and secret passages, resembles the society of the United States in a way, according to Craven. It is the system that he had grown to hate, and it seems only fitting that the explosion, in the end,destroys the house.
The Acting Performance
When you despise the baddies, you know the cast did a fantastic job! That is exactly what happens in this film, and Everett McGill and Wendy Robie (8.03 to 8.05) as the deranged Robsons are intriguing to see.
Wes Craven cast them after seeing them in Twin Peaks, and he lets them use the same sardonic, dark humour they used on the show in this film. For example, you will find it both humorous and horrifying when Mr. Robeson dressed up in a full-body gimp suit and wields his weapon.
Brandon Quintin Adams is impressive as the child actor playing the protagonist, and his gritty portrayal of the young boy in desperation is quite perfect. Ving Rhames stuns in a small but crucial role as Leroy and other members of the cast do justice to their parts.
The Theme of Class Struggle
One thing is evident from the story: the characters have a strong dislike for the society’s income imbalance and bigotry. The narrative is rife with racial animosity, and the film begins by depicting the horrors of the wealth divide.
The rich are shown to live in luxury, while the poor are represented to be unable to buy even the most basic necessities. You may even discern a link between the antagonists’ avarice and rage, as they display their ideology of race-based superiority. Mrs. Robeson treats Fool like garbage when she initially opens the door and sees him trying to sell cookies.
The sense of class supremacy is clearer if you observe the practices of the owners. They own way too many buildings and let them rot, knowing full well that the tenants are living a hellish life. The moment a tenant fails to pay up on time, they sell the residency to create office buildings, without a care for the fate of the people.
The community that lives in the ghetto is no more than filth for the owners, and they simply want to get rid of them and bring in their own kind. The director explores every corner of the class struggle, and if you remember the first few minutes after Fool enters the mansion, the shock in his eyes says it all!
The contrast between terrible poverty on one hand and unfettered wealth on the other is a disturbing interpretation of forced wealth redistribution. If you look closely at the characters, you’ll notice that their madness stems from their wealth. The wealthier they become, the crazier they become, and greed consumes them.
The end of the storey, like any fairytale, makes things right, and in this case, the oppressed rise up against their oppressors. Perhaps this is why, despite the fact that residents of the ghetto could have simply contacted the cops instead of taking responsibility for themselves, the cops have been kept out.
What it all comes down to is the poverty-stricken people taking back the wealth from the oppressor, and in a perfect climax, the house, which symbolizes all the negativity in the society, is destroyed by an explosion. The explosion is ignited by the protagonist, a little boy who suffered all his life due to the practices of his landlords.
Home Alone Uno reverse!
This film is, in many respects, the polar opposite of Home Alone! Home Alone is a film about an affluent child who has to cope with burglars in his house, and the invaders are portrayed as the good guys in this film. You quickly feel terrible for the protagonist, whose mother is dying and who will be evicted from his home in the near future.
If you’re used to the comedic antics of Home Alone, you’ll be surprised to learn that this film’s story is much darker. When compared to the fun and games that the Home Alone kid gets to deal with, the scary psychopaths with cannibalistic toddlers running about the house are far too much.
Our Final Words
Unfortunately, we live in a world where everyone has heard of Twilight, yet The People Under the Stairs is an underappreciated gem! Wes Craven’s brilliance, effective acting performances, and gritty tale won our hearts many years ago, and the best part about this timeless masterpiece is that you can still enjoy it now!
All we want to do is express our gratitude for such high standards and enjoy the entertainment on offer. Such films will never be made again, so take advantage of the chance to see one while it lasts.